Elemental Debuts Full Frame Rate Live 4K HEVC Video Processing

posted:

27/12/2013

Company achieves unprecedented milestone to enable next-generation Ultra HD TV services

Elemental Technologies, a leading supplier of video solutions for multiscreen content delivery, today announced the successful demonstration of full frame rate 4K Ultra HD high-efficiency video coding (HEVC). At a special event in London, the company showed an end-to-end workflow in which live 4K@p60 HEVC content was encoded for display in real-time. At sixty frames per second, the demonstration proves the industry leadership Elemental has attained with its HEVC implementation and heralds a new age of highly immersive viewing for consumers.

Elemental first announced support for the H.265 codec in January of 2013. Subsequently, the company brought functional real-time HEVC video processing to NAB in April of this year and demonstrated 10-bit 4K HEVC video processing at IBC in September. While at IBC, Elemental garnered two industry awards for its implementation and advancement of the new HEVC standard. Elemental rapidly progressed its HEVC functionality to achieve the world’s first real-time video processing of live 4K@p30 HEVC at the Osaka Marathon in October and now brings full frame rate 4K HEVC encoding to life in London.

Osaka Marathon

In the demonstration in London on 10 December, an Elemental® Live video processing system received high bitrate 4Kp60 AVC video in an MPEG-2 transport stream featuring professional sports content. The system was used to encode and deliver a 4Kp60 HEVC output to a PC-based decoder with final rendering on an 84-inch Planar 4K television.

“Unlike cinema, live sports are best viewed at higher frame rates. In 2014, we expect live sports to drive 4K Ultra HD adoption by those programmers and pay TV operators seeking to deliver a more compelling sports entertainment experience,” said Aslam Khader, chief product officer for Elemental. “With our HEVC implementation and software-defined architecture, Elemental gives customers a viable path to deliver Ultra HD TV services.”

With four times the resolution of full-resolution high-definition (1080p HD), 4K content presents a challenge to traditional compression approaches such as MPEG-2 and advanced video coding (AVC / H.264) in terms of the bandwidth required to deliver a smooth and immersive viewing experience. Elemental’s HEVC implementation allows for delivery of 4K content at bitrates equivalent to HD content. Video processing solutions from Elemental offer support for the new codec via a seamless software upgrade.

Gil McIntire, camera operator, using a RED EPIC UltraHD camera and a Canon 300mm lens to capture the action in 4K

Solutions from Elemental driving 4K HEVC content will be showcased in various partner workflows at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada January 7-10, 2014.

Learn more about live 4K Ultra HD encoding and service delivery in a white paper available here

Elemental Technologies is the leading supplier of video solutions for multiscreen content delivery. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, the company pioneered the use of graphics processors to power adaptive video streaming over IP networks. Providing unmatched solutions for more than 300 leading media franchises worldwide, Elemental helps pay TV operators, content programmers, film studios and sports broadcasters bring video to any screen, anytime – all at once. The company has offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, China, Russia, India and Brazil.